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Arc 1.2 Post human conditions

More fact and fiction from the Reed Business Publishing empire. I got 1.1 and read a couple of the stories. A bit of style over substance I thought, and haven’t bought this issue. For the record here are the stories in this issue, with the summaries from their website/tumblr :

Attenuation by Nick Harkaway : Sonny Hall lived fast, died young and left a beautiful corpse. And that’s when his troubles really began

The Man by Paul McAuley : Why did he come to this hardscrabble human settlement, unannounced, unequipped, without purpose, without desire? Come to think of it – why did they?

Update : this story was picked by Gardner Dozois for Year’s Best Science Fiction #30, where I read it and noted:

Set in McAuley’s Jackaroo universe, a great little story of an elderly beachcomber who finds a man at her remote door. Who he was, or what he is, is a mystery, perhaps tied in with the ancient semi-submerged alien factories on the nearby beaches of the remote planet gifted to humanity by the Jackaroo. Classy.

Big Dave’s in Love by T.D. Edge : Poor Dave: somewhere under all those vodka mallows beats a lover’s heart. And Jack had better find it, fast, before the sludge arrives.